The politics of wire service photography: Infrastructures of representation in a digital newsroom

Abstract

This article examines the politics of image brokering in the daily rituals of a major wire service's photography division. Specifically, it investigates crises of visualization: moments when routine visualization itself is challenged due to changes in infrastructures of representation. The transition to digital transmission has changed work of image brokers-people involved in the creation, validation, packaging, and circulation of images. New image brokers and changed infrastructures of representation challenge established hierarchies and who provides and polices news images. At a moment when the war on terror is also a war of images, battles over the infrastructures of representation are battles over visual worldmaking. [digital, infrastructure of representation, photography, Agence France Presse, journalism, crisis of representation, wire service, visualization, Iraq]. © 2012 by the American Anthropological Association.